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It was with great pleasure, gentlemen of the Loyal Legion, that I 
accepted an invitation to speak to j'oti to-day. It was understood, how- 
ever, that my words should be few, and the time occupied brief. I do not 
intend to preach a sermon, but to address you informally on two or three 
points suggested by the name and objects of your organization and the 
occasion of this service. I have the honor and privilege of speaking to the 
Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. And this service 
is annually held in memory of that surrender at Appomattox, which ended 
the War of the Rebellion. Every word gives food for reflection. 

And first, this is a military order ; and as such it stands for a certain 
estimate of the value of the profession of arms. That profession is one of 
the oldest in history ; honorable and useful to the State. You, as mem- 
bers of such an order as this, can have no sympathy with people who waste 
time and breath in decrying the soldier and misrepresenting the value of 
his work, with such as would disband, if they could, the armies of the 
United States, and run our navy on rocks, there to break up and go to 
pieces. A military order is presumably a body of intelligent persons, with 
clear heads, open eyes, and a just perception of the conditions under which 
mankind are making their way from age to age in this changeful and uneasy 
world. You have adopted the style of a Legion ; the word recalls the day 
when over vast spaces of the earth men owed their peace to the legions of 
imperial Rome, which, like a police force, kept order far and near along 
the sea coasts of the South and through the forest lands of the cold and 
gloomy North. Again, you are a Loyal Legion, and of that word loyalty 
I shall say something later on, as necessary for these times. Moreover, 
this order consists, in the greater part, of men who fought for God and 
country, as officers and soldiers in the service of the United States, during 
those four years which tried men's souls, and in whose issue was involved 
the safety or destruction of a nation. Let me speak as briefly on these 
lines, as the allotted time permits. 



And first, of the Art of War, the ancient, honorable, necessary Art of 
War. Appreciating the motives of peace societies, and giving them credit 
for the good which they have done, we warn them, however, not to be over 
sanguine, not to become excited in the expectation of immediate or even 
early success. The day is not in sight when their ideas can find universal, 
or anything near to universal acceptance. Not one of us will live to see 
the entrance into the thousand years of peace. We fear that if inter- 
national war should cease that happy occurrence would not bring war to 
an end ; it would still have to be waged, not by nation against nation, but 
within each nation, between forces of protection of law and order and 
other forces destructive to the peace and quiet of the State. Here the 
motto on your coat-of-arms comes in well : lex regit, arma tuentur. 
Never were words more happily conjoined ; without the akma I venture to 
say there would be short shrift with the lex. Life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness are guaranteed by law ; the law is menaced, and will be 
while human nature remains what it is, by classes impatient of authority 
and restless under restraint. Take this great city, for instance. We have 
little or no fear of seeing foreign fleets in our waters in hostile array, nor 
of foreign troops landing on Long Island or Staten Island, but we can and 
do presage a danger worse than that. Modern society is in ferment to- 
day. This city contains, one dreads to think how large a number, who 
are deluded by visions never to be realized, and seething with passions 
which no calm voice or sound speech can allay. This city, thank God, has 
a standing army, keeping watch on the turbulent and the seditious. A 
police force, numbering, horse and foot, 8,600 men, well disciplined, trained 
to the manner of controlling mobs and dispersing rioters ; a National 
Guard, numbering some 9,600, infantry, cavalry, artillery, not inexperi- 
enced in their duties as defenders of our citizens and keepers of the peace; 
and beyond and below, where the waters of the bay reflect the sun by day, 
the moon and stars by night, are military reservations, where the flag of 
freedom flies above the barracks and batteries of the Government of the 
United States. Dismiss the police, disband the National Guard; and 
secure non-interference by the general Goverment, and what would 
happen ? I know what I am talking about, for I saw with these eyes the 
Astor Place riot in 1849, and the Draft riots in 1863, and the Orange riots 
in 1870-71, and I venture to predict as possible that within a month we 
should see worse things yet: mobs parading the streets, houses burning, 
shops looted, and citizens flying for their lives. Such revolutionary out- 
rage would, of course, provoke resistance ; conservatives would rise 
against the public foe, and there would be war again, more bitter, more 
fierce, more destructive than ever beforcj I speak to you as a minister of 
the gospel of peace, but also as a free-born citizen of the United States, 
and I predict that war will not cease until the kingdoms of this world are 
become the kingdoms of the Lord and of Christ. If that is never to be, as 
the enemies of the Gospel declare, and if the revolutionary schemes with 
yv^hich the world is drenched, under the cloak of social reforni, are not, by 



some means, checked or stayed, we venture the prophecy that there is 
trouble ahead exceeding anything known thus far on this little planet. It 
is a far cry to the day when Liberty can keep her footing without the 
defence and protection of arms, and of men trained to that profession. 
True as Scripture is your motto, lex regit, arma tuentur. 

So, gectlemen of this military order, you are pledged to respect for 
your old calling. And reading the third article of your Constitution, 
which declares the objects of this society, I find among them these : " To 
cherish the memories and associations of the war waged in defence of the 
unity and indivisibility of the Republic," and "to foster the cultivation 
of military and naval science, and advance the best interests of the 
soldiers and sailors of the United States. " No one can doubt where you 
stand, and it is refreshing, in this day of intellectual and moral confusion, 
to know where anyone stands. Now let me proceed to speak of that word 
which describes your union ; it is called the Loyal Legion. No emphasis 
on that term can be too strong, no word could ring more true. Loyalty 
and Liberty. They belong to each other ; they should be held in the 
sacred bond of indissoluble marriage. But these are times when, through 
the perversion and abuse of the word liberty, men need the other word to 
restore the balance. Loyalty means allegiance to what exists under law ; 
to the general government ; to the States in their proper sphere ; regard 
for the rights and liberties of the honest citizen, the maintenance of the 
national honor, union and independence. I am quoting again from your 
Constitution and from the article which pledges you " to enforce unquali- 
fied allegiance to the general government, protect the rights and liberties 
of American citizenship, and maintain national honor, union and inde- 
pendence." That is the talk of which we cannot have too much just now. 

For we are in a tideway ; the flood is hard to stem. Sanguine theo- 
rists, fed chiefly on viands provided by foreign caterers to discontent ; 
warm-hearted folk, carried away by a sympathy which cannot help its 
objects ; romantic and hysterical men and women, who " listen with 
credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms 
of hope ; " conspirators against all existing institutions, these have set the 
floods a-going and heated almost to boiling point the caldron of envy, class 
hatred and general mistrust. At this point we want loyalty more than 
aught else, and a strong conservative feeling of which that word might be 
taken as the just diagnosis. Loyalty has not always or everywhere the 
same meaning ; its objects differ in different places and at different epochs 
in history. With us it means loyalty to the Constitution, to the system 
which has made us a world power, to American ideas and not those of 
foreign radicals and revolutionists, loyalty to the principles and faith of 
our fathers, uncorrupted as they were by the poison circulating to-day. We 
must be loyal to the Constitution, as the ablest document ever framed for 
the guidance of an intelligent people, too much tinkered already: God 
save us from the passion for further amendment of the noble instrument, 
and would to God we might not see another amendment for 50 years to 



come ! We must be loyal to the memory of our forefathers, of "Washing- 
ton, Jackson, Taylor, Grant among soldiers ; of Perry, Decatur, Farragut 
among naval commanders ; of Alexander Hamilton, Marshall, Webster 
among statesmen ; of martyrs like Lincoln and McKinley. Loyalty looks 
to the safeguarding of laws which provide freedom of person ; the right of 
every man to labor without dictation from overseers, individual or col- 
lective ; the right to hold property and accumulate whatever may be 
gained by honest and honorable means, and to enjoy in peace one's prop- 
erty, one's home, one's religion, secure from violent interference on any 
hand. We think that to be the mind of loyal men. We are'daily stronger in 
that persuasion, as forced to see how the idea of loyalty is weakened in the 
passion for independent thought and act, the admiration for whatever is 
tmbridled and eccentric, and the craze for experiment in the social and 
religious sphere alike. 

I must be brief, and bring this address to a close. Pardon the speaker 
if it has not taken the sermon form. He has not forgotten — who could 
forget— the religious aspect of the case. You recognize it in your consti- 
tution, from which, once more and for the last time I quote : Among your 
fundamental principles is "first, a firm belief and trust in Almighty 
God." Yes, that is the first, in the creed of the loyal soul. God is above ; 
in Him we trust. "The Lord is King, be the people never .so impatient. 
He .sitteth between the Cherubim, be the earth never so unqtiiet." What 
there is now in our beloved country of order, of quietness, of peace, of 
truth to word, duty, obligation, is due to the presence and providence of 
that One " who made and preserves us a nation." God save the State ! 
And that God will save the State we firmly believe. Not irreverently may 
we add another article to that faith in the Supreme Power above. The 
Lord works by instruments, through agencies, adapted to the fulfillment 
of His will. And we believe in such an agency, in the strong common 
sense of the American people. This is one of the most fortimate of nations, 
one of the mo.';t pro.«;perous, one of the most peaceful and orderly. There 
are no oppressed and down-trodden classes here ; no silent, suffering vic- 
tims of tyrannical rule ; no man is forbidden to make his waA^, if he can, 
and rise to any position which he can reach ; no sign is anywhere of arbi- 
trary, irresponsible power ; no check, so far, on enterprise, activity, 
advance from more to more. And yet we have the enemy at our gates 
and among us ; not abroad, but right here. Our safeguard, under Divine 
Providence, from philosophic, theoretic and sentimental aggression, is 
first, in the .strong common sense of the vast majority of the people. To 
that we trust to silence the evil voices, and prevent from listening to their 
delusive speech. Should that fail, should treason to American ideals and 
di.sloyalty to the government proceed to open act, then, loyal men, stand 
forth, and draw the sword in defence of the nation, even as you drew it 
before! God avert the danger and defer the day when the fury of unneces- 
sary and unjustifiable revolution shall break out within our borders, but if 
it mu.st come God give you the will to arise and quit ycu like men, and 
beat down the disturber of the peace! 



To every loyal American in whose heart are the love of country, an 
ideal of good citizenship and a reverence for the memory of the fathers, be 
health and peace ! To all who have pledged their honor as officers and 
gentlemen, to be governed by the constitution and laws under which they 
live ; to every man, be he lay or cleric, who keeps his word and solemn 
oath and means what he says, and abhors the "lying lips and the deceitful 
tongue," and, to quote the great poet, is minded 

" To honor his own word as if his God's," 
to all such we do homage, as faithful and true ; and we salute them and 
wish them God speed, as defenders of our freedom and maintainers of 
righteousness and truth. 




LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



012 196 626 8 



